Mary Prime, BACP

Mary Prime is a professional counsellor based in Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom who brings eight years of clinical experience to her practice. She holds the BACP credential - the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy - a recognised professional affiliation that reflects training and adherence to established practice standards. Mary trained initially as a person centred counsellor and qualified in 2018, later completing a higher level diploma to broaden the ways she supports people. She has recent experience working within NHS talking therapies as a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner and currently contributes as a Social Prescriber within Community Mental Health Teams.

Mary meets clients where they are, aiming to understand how different areas of life affect emotional and physical wellbeing. She tailors her work by integrating client centred principles with other modalities she has trained in, and she is also training to become a health coach so coaching techniques can be incorporated when helpful. Since the global pandemic she has worked predominantly online, offering evening and weekend appointments to improve accessibility for people with busy lives.

Across many hundreds of clients she has supported people with anxiety, stress, low mood and depression, relationship difficulties, life transitions such as starting or leaving university, grief and loss, and those experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide. A specialist interest is supporting people living with chronic pain and long-term health conditions; Mary brings 16 years of lived experience with a chronic pain condition and uses that perspective to offer practical empathy and problem solving. She also supports unpaid carers and those navigating parenting, career questions, sleep and eating issues, attention differences, and neurodiversity, drawing on her own later-life diagnoses of Autism, ADHD, and dyslexia to inform her practice.

Approaches That Guide Online Sessions

Mary uses client centred therapy to place the individual at the heart of the work - offering a non-directive, empathic space where clients lead the conversation and their own priorities shape the goals. This approach helps with issues such as relationship difficulties, life transitions, and building self-esteem.

She also draws on cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT, which looks at the links between thoughts, feelings and behaviours and offers practical strategies to manage anxiety, low mood, and stress. Mindfulness therapy is used alongside other techniques to help people develop present-moment awareness and reduce reactivity, useful for coping with persistent worry, sleep disturbance, or chronic pain.

Finding the right approach is part of the therapeutic process and Mary works collaboratively with each person to decide what fits best for their needs, goals and preferences. She will discuss options, adapt methods over time, and combine elements from different approaches when that best supports progress.

Online therapy with Mary is offered via video calls, phone sessions, live chat or text-based messaging, providing flexibility for people with busy schedules, health limitations or caring responsibilities. These remote options make it easier to schedule appointments in evenings or weekends and to access consistent support from registered professionals without travelling to an office.